Urinary flow recording systems are known in the prior art. Such systems traditionally include appropriate transducers for generating flow rate signals during voiding, i.e., micturition. From these signals, such prior art systems typically calculate the patient's maximum flow rate, average flow rate, and voiding time. These urinary flow variables are then provided to the clinician in some useful format. This information is then used by the clinician to evaluate the patient's urinary function.
Such prior art systems, and particularly the flow rate and voiding time variables, are highly sensitive to measurement artifacts. Moreover, such data is only provided to the clinician in numerical and graphical form, without analysis that contains diagnostic information, and without correction for the voided volume. Most of all, diagnostic use of these systems is hindered by the fact that quantitative normal values of the variables are not well-known and therefore a diagnostic interpretation of the variables is not possible or subjective. This also implies that such systems can never be used by non-experienced persons, for example, first line health workers such as general practitioners. These systems therefore do not provide accurate and reliable discrimination between normal and abnormal micturition, which is the main objective of the test.
It would therefore be desirable to provide improved urinary flow classification systems and methods which overcome these and other problems associated with the prior art.